This week we profile a recent publication in Nature Communications
from the laboratory of Dr. Michael Gale Jr. (pictured, right) at UW.
Can you provide a brief overview of your lab’s current research focus?
The Lab’s current research focus is to define the virus and host processes that trigger and control innate immunity, and to build therapeutic approaches targeting innate immunity to protect against virus infection. We currently have projects ongoing that are focused on applying these research interests to infection by HIV, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, , West Nile virus, and Zika virus.
What is the significance of the findings in this publication?
The current publication describes our study in which we applied functional genomics and bioinformatics analyses to a model of acute HIV infection. By comparing animals that do get disease to those that do not get disease, we found that protection against disease is linked to programming of a wound-healing innate immune response. This response suppresses inflammation while directing wound healing processes that protect against HIV disease.
What are the next steps for this research?
We will focus on identifying the specific gene switches and their response networks that functionally program this wound healing response. The goal of this work is to identify therapeutic targets for controlling immune response programming.
This work was funded by:
Supported by NIH contract HHSN272201800008C
